Helen
by Hannalore Dayne
Summary: Seamus O'Grady is locked away in prison, with nothing to do but think about the girl that put him there...


Disclaimer: If I owned anybody from _Charlie's Angels_, I'd be rich.  Enough said.

Rating: PG-13, just in case.  Nothing specific, just not really kid-friendly.

Note: This is based on the storyline from the second movie.

Seamus was dreaming.

He was sitting behind the shiny wooden desk, knuckles white against his thighs, teeth clenched.  His lawyer was whispering to stay calm, act hurt or bewildered or _innocent,_ for God's sake – but Seamus wasn't listening.  He was watching her.

Helen.  Eyes blank and red from crying, she was reciting what she'd seen.  _After he'd told her not to tell anyone._  She was _lying_ about him.  He had realized this three years into his life sentence.  She was a liar.  He'd never done anything bad, and here she was now trying to put him away.

_I loved you, Helen_, he accused her silently, watching her look at the judge, the jury, anywhere but at him.  _Look what you've done to me._  He looked down and his wrists were handcuffed.  In his breast pocket was the picture of her, the picture he was so aware of it felt hot against his chest.  His body was leaner than it had actually been at the trial.  Three years of working out.  He had never worked out before he went to prison.  But he got in trouble for fighting, and he needed some way to let everything out.  To strike out somehow at everything that had happened.

But Helen was still talking.  He stopped thinking so that he could hear her.

"Seamus is a bad person," she said.  "He killed a hundred people, I saw every one.  He's ugly, and I hate him."  She looked at him finally, and he broke out into a cold sweat.  _No, no, I asked you not to tell them!  I asked so nicely –_ "Seamus is stupid, and useless.  The only place he belongs is prison."  Helen's eyes were uncaring, no longer the tearful frightened orbs he remembered.  "I never loved him."  Everyone in the jury began to laugh at him.  He felt himself crying, and the tears fell on the picture in his pocket.  He tried to take it out, to save it, but his hands were cuffed.  The jury laughed harder.  Helen was laughing, too.  His lawyer was laughing.

Then he was upside down, doing curl-ups towards the ceiling, sweating and going faster and faster because he could still hear everyone laughing, even though the courtroom was gone.

"So this is how you're going to make it go away?" Helen asked him scathingly.  "Curl-ups?  That's a good way to solve your problems."  She stepped into his line of vision; upside down she looked unnatural and beautiful.  He pushed himself harder.  Up, down.  "You can't take it back, Seamus.  You'll never be good enough."  He hardly heard the last part through his own sobbing groans as he forced himself to do another curl-up, and another… his limbs began to shake uncontrollably.  "Why did you ever think I loved you?  I don't even like you.  Why would I testify against you unless I hated you?"

"Helen," he gasped soundlessly.

She turned and walked away from him.  She started to blur out of his vision.  Then he fell from the ceiling and didn't even know which way was up as he tried to reach out to someone who was already gone.

He woke up bellowing.

"Shut up, over there!"  Someone rattled the bars across the hall.

Seamus looked around wildly.  "Hel-" he began, but she wasn't there.  Only her picture.  He leapt off his cot and ran over to it.  "You're all right," he whispered, still panting from his dream.  He kissed the picture, and felt Helen kiss him back.  "I saved you," he breathed.  He wanted her so much.  He brought his hand around to touch her hair, but instead of caressing her he found himself smashing his fist into the wall.  "I hate you_,_" he murmured almost peacefully.  "_I hate you._"

"Shut _up,_" someone called out, but Seamus didn't even hear them.

"I never used to be this way," he confided softly.  He ran his thumb along the edge of the lovely picture.  "I think it's your fault.  Yes, it's probably your fault."  He bit his lip, and tasted blood; then he sank slowly to the floor in front of Helen, never taking his eyes off of her.

He sat like that for the rest of the night.

The guards found him in the morning and supposed he had gone catatonic.  They called the resident doctor, who noticed his limp hand and ordered gauze for a cast.  When they tried to open the gate, Seamus got up off the floor and sat down on his cot, staring at them coolly, even when the doctor asked him if his hand was broken.  They uneasily left him be.

He turned to Helen.  "Love you," he said casually, as a husband to a wife.  _You lied about me._

He knew he was going to kill her.  He just didn't know when.


End file.
